Today's classrooms are extremely noisy environments. In fact, they are
so noisy that most students from kindergarten to high school are likely to
experience significant problems hearing the voice of a teacher. A review
of current data on noise and reverberation in these facilities indicates
that poor acoustics is the prevailing condition rather than the exception.
In particular, environmental noise levels during regular school activities
are approximately 4 to 38 decibels above values currently agreed upon for
optimal speech recognition by normal-hearing children and the situation
would be no different for hearing-impaired children taught in special
classrooms. For instance, in representative conditions, normal-hearing
first-grade students would recognize only 66% or so of the words being
spoken by the teacher This is a quite alarming situation in addition to
vocal fatigue experienced by teachers as a result of sustained efforts to
rise their voice well above the din.

Intruding noise from the outside and from adjacent classrooms as well as
noise generated (or transmitted) by heating and ventilation equipment are
part of the problem. Internal noise generated by children represents a
significant contribution to overall environmental noise levels with
younger students being the noisiest groups. Of course, this results partly
from their limited attention spans and partly from the fact that this is
typically the time in which they learn classroom discipline. Moreover,
noise levels in the classroom are exacerbated by reverberation properties
of the room. With greater reverberation levels, there is a greater buildup
of noise which then propagates more uniformly throughout the room.

Architectural and engineering solutions will be of great help in
reducing external noise sources penetrating either from the outside or
from adjacent classrooms or corridors. Some example measures include
improving the design of heating/ventilation systems, carefully installing
these systems, adding acoustical insulation to partitions, double-glazing
windows, padding interior walls and surfaces with absorptive materials.
Not only will these solutions significantly reduce noise levels in
classrooms but they also are quite simple and straightforward techniques.
As such, they are not prohibitively expensive, certainly not to the point
of deterring school administrators from taking action. Therefore, these
solutions should be the first approach considered for improvements. In
addition to easing the burden for teachers, they provide benefits for all
users of classrooms: normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children,
non-native speakers of English. However, architectural and engineering
solutions will be more difficult to implement in existing school
facilities and modifying open-air classrooms will be especially difficult.
They will also have limited benefits in controlling noise generated by
children.

Identifying more ecologically-minded approaches like increasing the
voice of the teacher well above noise levels is a difficult task too. For
example, introducing loudspeakers in the classroom may very well disrupt
adjacent classroom activities. Similarly, training teachers to become
louder or more intelligible may mean that their voice can possibly be
heard in adjacent rooms. Weighed against their potential side effects, the
modest benefits these measures would bring are clearly not large enough to
be considered a general solution to the noise problem in classrooms.

Thus, there appears to be no simple solution to noisy classrooms.
Exploring innovative solutions like capitalizing on visual speech cues and
facial expressions may have to be considered. Quite obviously, benefits of
audiovisual speechreading can reasonably be expected from teachers
specifically trained to be highly visible speakers. Similarly,
implementing efficient communication strategies to ensure that what is
being taught is at least correctly heard by children may also provide
useful.

With the hearing-impaired, amplifying the voices of teachers and
providing the assistance of interpreters are basic services to be offered
right at the beginning of the school curriculum. Employing notetakers
would also be required whenever children start to acquire general
knowledge beyond basic reading, writing and mathematics. Clearly, managing
the noise problem in the classroom calls for the collective and coherent
effort of architects, engineers, educators and rehabilitative audiologists
to free children from one of the most pervasive but insidious limitations
to academic achievement in the school population. For that reason, it
currently represents a major challenge in education.